Some Assembly Required
by MJP
Summary: Two friends move in together for the first time. They needed furniture and found their friendly Scandinavian furnishings store. Several flat-pack boxes later, they find out they didn't need so much anyway. KagamixKonata, R&R appreciated!


Okay. Real life happened and I didn't have any workable ideas for, oh, almost two solid years. What's in suspension is probably going to stay that way, but who knows, this might yield something. For now, it's a one-shot, hopefully one that stimulates myself and HdPhnz to make more Lucky Star happen.

**Some Assembly Required**

The apartment was a pretty good deal no matter how you looked at it. Two bedrooms, a decent living area, eat-in kitchen, and a small balcony. It didn't overlook much and what it did look out on to was an amazingly ugly, modern wall of skyscapers. It gave off too much light at night since nobody ever really seemed to leave it.

Two bedrooms, a decent living area, an eat-in kitchen, and a small balcony.

A small desk and working hutch went up in the corner, there were all the primary-color Scandinavian decoratives mixed tastefully with the light fixtures, the kotatsu, and the kitchen. The light fixtures were their real pride and joy, a mix of frosted-glass sconces and geometric shapes. They had some of their raging debates – "this one matches your hair," said with a grin, versus "but it only takes a ten-watt bulb! We'll go blind if we put these in!" - but they were settled in the end as their raging debates always were, with a resigned sigh on the compromising side and a wry grin on the victorious one.

They didn't even need the toolbox her father had supplied, the hammer and power drill lying dormant and cast aside. The opted, instead, for the double-L-shaped Allen key found in almost every Ikea box they'd brought home or had delivered. The boxes themselves had long since been taken apart and left in the recycle bins outside their building.

Only one box was left. It was the other bed they'd bought. The receipt was taped to it, the end result of a decision that didn't need any teasing, compromising, or relenting.

One of them had lay down on the first bed they had put together, built in the room with all the posters. She had sighed, wiped her brow, and stretched out. Her friend – at least at that minute, she was still a friend – had laid down next to her, unwittingly in the arc of the stretch.

She had pulled her arm – and her friend – back and was suddenly face-to-face with a surprised pair of green eyes. Inches away.

Face to face, closer than she'd thought, and it was only at that moment when she noticed that she was too surprised to breathe.

She was equally surprised when she felt her head on her chest, her arms around her waist.

Equally surprised when she wrapped her own arms around her friend.

Neither of them were really surprised that it took a long time to let go.

"You don't smell like sweat at all."

"That's funny, because a certain Kagamin needs a shower from where I stand."

"Oh, shut up." She pulled Konata closer to her, wrapping her arms around the smaller girl's shoulders. Kagami playfully kissed the top of Konata's head, nuzzling her forehead. "I'm sure you stink like the rest of us."

"If I'm going to be stinky, Kagamin's going to be stinky with me, right?"

"Hey!"

"And if we're both stinky, it means we can take a bath together to get clean again, right?"

"Can it!" Kagami blushed, rolling away from Konata and crossing her arms across her chest. "I always knew you were warped from all those erogames. I knew it, I knew it all along, and now I'm right. Just after we signed a stupid lease, I was right."

"Heh, I didn't think there was any doubt in your mind ever since we first became friends."

"No, there wasn't."

Kagami rolled over onto her back once again. Konata had propped her head on her shoulder, resting on her elbow as she looked down towards Kagami.

"So?" Konata asked.

Kagami smiled. "'So' what?"

"So you're not going to go into complete tsundere breakdown and turn sweet on me, will you?"

She rolled over and mimicked Konata's pose, reaching out to rest her free hand on the smaller girl's waist. She traced a lazy circle just at the hem of her shirt in the gentle slope above her hip. "That depends. Are you going to turn in that external hard drive you already set up next to the computer?"

She reached over. She leaned in. Their lips touched, they tried so desperately not to breathe on each other. The touch of their lips turned into both of them pressing their lips, themselves, together. The tentative hands on each other's waist and shoulders wrapped around their respective backs, pulling each other closer. The kiss intensified. Their lips opened as they kissed. Their tongues darted to each other.

It was only then when Kagami felt her cheeks turn red, almost – only almost – involuntarily pulling back.

Konata's wide eyes were sleepily gazing at her, a soft gaze to Kagami's half-stunned light violet stare.

"We..." Kagami spoke first.

"We?"

"We're not... we're not really going to need to use two separate beds, are we?"

She got a lazy, mischievous smile in reply.

A decent view, a modern kitchen, a nicely-decorated living room. The screen saver on the computer looped through the scanned Megami Magazine anime pin-ups it had been looping through. They took the box with the extra bed, heavy enough to strain their efforts, back into the living room.

They'd bring it back to Ikea tomorrow.

Just before the store closed.


End file.
